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Eugenics
Eugenics is a field of applied genetics which aims at improving the genetic quality of a human population through excluding certain genetic groups judged to be less desirable and promoting other genetic groups judged to be superior. The Eugenics movement was founded by Francis Galton in 1883, but Plato had supported selective breeding in humans since 400 BC, and the concept had a longer history. During the early 20th century, Eugenics was negatively associated with Adolf Hitler and Nazism due to his belief that Aryan (Norse/white) people were genetically superior to other ethnic groups and that they should be given large amounts of space (Lebensraum) which they could inhabit. The Eugenics movement became controversial due to marriage prohibitions, forced sterilization, and occasional persecution of minority groups, but Eugenics evolved alongside human rights and took on a new form during the 21st century. With the rise of assisted reproduction technology during the 1980s and 1990s and the advent of genome editing in the 2010s, a new form of eugenics rose to prominence, and the first creation of genetically-edited human babies by Chinese scientist He Jiankui in November 2018 caused a wave of controversy. History 1880s-1940s The Eugenics movement began in the 1880s, with the coin "eugenics" being coined by Francis Galton - Galton saw it as a method of improving the human race through controlled breeding. The movement has its roots in Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which holds that species must adapt to survive and reproduce. Gregor Mendel also influenced the movement, as he gave the background about dominant and recessive traits which could be inherited through parents. Galton discovered that genes work in bell-shaped curves, and he claimed to know what the best humans should be, arguing that some families and people are superior due to other bell-shaped curves. Galton liked the typical British gentleman as the ideal human, fitting in with the era in which the British Empire as at its height. The goals of Eugenics were to "improve the overall fitness" of humans, initially focusing on the genotype of individuals. Positive Eugenics would encourage those with "Superior Genotypes" to have more offspring, while Negative Eugenics would prevent those with "Unfit Genotypes" from reproduction. The approach either ignores or disregards many of the inherent problems of reaching the goal by the means proposed to reach the goal. Basic understanding of the importance of the interaction between genes to obtain a genotype, interaction between genes and the environment to obtain a phenotype, and what actually constitutes an "Improved Fitness of the Speciies" were questions which led to some opposition to the movement. Nevertheless, entire social programs and government agencies in many countries in the period of time from the 1890s to the end of World War II had well-established Eugenic programs. Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species and the introduction of the concept of natural selection gave rise to a movement which exploited the dark side of evolution. Racism based on pseudo-scientific misinterpretations became powerful, genocides occurred throughout countries in Africa which were being colonized, restrictive immigration policies were adopted by several Western countries, many European countries and the USA passed laws against racial mixing, and public policies for positive and negative eugenic programs were promoted in Europe and the USA. The movement in the United States, led by Charles Davenport, was energized by the US Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell in 1927, which ruled that sterilization laws were not unconstitutional. The Eugenics crusade started wihth the highly-educated upper classes (only around 5% of people went to college), and it became the model that other countries used to model their own Eugenics movements. Category:Genetics